


Five Reasons Peter Burke Was Reese Hughes’ Favorite Agent

by storiesfortravellers



Category: White Collar
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Longing, M/M, Possible Unrequited Feelings, respect
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-10
Updated: 2014-01-10
Packaged: 2018-01-08 04:48:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1128512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After retirement, Reese remembers what it was like to work with Peter. Can be read as gen or one-sided UST.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Reasons Peter Burke Was Reese Hughes’ Favorite Agent

**Author's Note:**

> For elrhiarhodan for fandomstocking

1\. The best thing about working with Peter Burke is that Reese knew he could always trust Peter. Always. When powerful, respected people accused Agent Burke of something, Reese never had to figure out who was telling the truth. He knew immediately; he just had to figure out how to prove it (or help Peter prove it). Being an agent, and then ASAC, meant that Reese had constantly seen the worst, most dishonest side of human nature. Having someone like Peter Burke around made it harder to forget that there was some decency in the human animal yet.

2\. Respect. Peter respected Reese, and not just for his title, and Reese knew it. Even when he could see that Peter desperately wanted to mislead him (usually regarding something that was surely Caffrey's fault), even when he would dance around questions a little, he would never promise Reese something he knew to be a lie. That just wasn’t how Peter worked. He put his respect for you above what he wanted for himself. 

3\. Peter was willing, behind closed doors, to offer disagreement. Peter didn’t get where he was by sucking up, and he would always enter the conversation under the assumption that Reese wouldn’t mind being wrong, wouldn’t mind Peter being right, as long as it got the job done better, faster, and safer; this was another way, Reese knew, that Peter showed his respect.

4\. Peter didn’t know how to let go. The man was like a dog with a bone, and spending 4 years chasing Caffrey was just the most obvious example. Reese knew that not everyone at the Bureau thought that this level of tenacity (some called it obsession) was a good thing -- and indeed, Reese knew from his own sometimes strained personal life that this doggedness was a rather undesirable quality outside of the office – but Reese thought it was a quality that the very best agents had. 

5\. Peter picked the best people, and he got the best people to stick around. Jones, whose reputation was sterling in the Bureau, had offers from many other divisions, but he wanted to work with Peter. And Reese sometimes considered what a loss it would have been if some other agent had been assigned Barrigan as a newbie, someone who didn’t see her potential. And even that bastard Caffrey, Reese had to admit, was a bit of a find. And obviously, no one other than Peter could have gotten him to stay, leash or not. 

Everyone at the Bureau (who was a fan of Peter, who admired rather than shook their heads at the fact that he wasn’t afraid to take down the big dogs) liked to say that Agent Burke’s stats spoke for themselves. Reese knew that the stats were just a tiny part of it. It was the people he surrounded himself with, people of integrity and intelligence and loyalty. It was his dependability, and how utterly unfazed he was by the pretentions of money and luxury the White Collar Division faced daily. It was, Reese thought, the look in Peter’s eyes when he really sunk his teeth into a case, the look that made Reese absolutely confident that there would be an arrest, that nothing was going to stop Peter Burke from getting his collar. It was the way that Peter rolled up his sleeves as if figuring out a criminal’s plan were just like laying bricks, piece by piece, hard work and gumption and a relentlessly stubborn refusal to quit under the baking sun.

Reese had always assumed that after he retired, he would miss the responsibility, the sense that he was serving his community and country. And he did miss those things. But it turned out that the thing he missed most was the people.


End file.
